The Cats Pajamas....

Hey,

I have wanted this 'It could be Vodka..' set by The Cats Pajamas for ages.

I finally got a bit of a deal on it last week and it arrived quite quickly.

Because I was off on Tuesday I managed to have an extended playtime at my desk, so I broke out the set and rustled up two cards.

I stamped the main image for both cards in the same place, but for the main card I created a background using the mini Fish, Cat head and square stamp that come with the set. I coloured the images using distress inks and a paintbrush.

I created the sentiment by using 3 stamps sets and masked off parts I didn't want.

It's so bright and cheery. I like it, I really like the teeny square stamp and the Cat stamp is going to be very versatile.

To illustrate that point, here is card number two..

I stamped mini hearts onto the teacup and coloured them using Spectrum Noir sparkle pens and added a simple sentiment to it.

Adding some detail to the teacup gives a totally different look to the stamp..I can't wait to make a few more versions of this.

There are also a few more stamps in the set that I need to play with..hopefully before I leave for London (so tonight then?!)

Cx

4 Cards, 1 Stamp Set: Pink Fresh Studio

Hey,

It has been a while since I did a 4 cards, 1 stamp set post.

Before we left for Atlantic City, I pulled out a new Pink Fresh Studio stamp set ' Lovely Borders 2' for a little play -

I really liked this quirky set, I thought the borders would make simple fun cards.

I die-cut watercolour paper and stamped four of the borders, each with slightly different spacing. I watercoloured all of the borders using distress inks and a paintbrush.

The sentiments got pulled from a variety of stamp sets.

They are so CAS, I really like them and they were super easy to make, which is always nice!

Cx

CASE brush strokes and abstracts..

Hey,

Happy Sunday, hubby and I are on the way to Atlantic City, I'm actually writing this post on the bus!

I saw this great card by Julie Ebersole, using her stamps for Ellen Hutson -

I realised that I had some similar products (brushstrokes by Simon Says Stamp and landscape textures by Neat & Tangled). So I thought I'd have a play.

I'm pretty pleased with both cards. I actually dug out the few pigment inks that I have, so I'd get really rich and bright colours.

The first card I made was the bottom one, I really love the rich colours and the Misti made it super easy to do, I actually left the brushstroke stamp in one position and moved the paper. The sentiment on this one is a mix of a great stamp by Waffle Flower and a Tim Holtz sticker. I added a few enamel dots to finish it off

I decided to get all brave with the top card and only use a few brushstrokes and add in more of the abstract elements. I like it, feels like I could stamp happy birthday inside...

Fun cards to make, quite time consuming for 2 cards, but totes worth it.

Cx

Christmas Wrapping: Presents..

Hey,

Earlier in the week I showed you the awesome tags that I made, for the gifts that need to leave before I leave for London.

Here are the gifts that they went on.

Pretty simple, just brown paper and twine, so that the tags pop.

On the reverse they are secured with bright, fun washi tape.

Cx

Unicorns, Balloons and Clouds...

Hey,

Happy Black Friday!

I have been 'crafty' shopping all week, so today I am off to the gym (working of Hubby's delicious Thanksgiving dinner) and then going to do some Christmas gift shopping.

We had a really nice relaxed Thanksgiving and dinner was amazing, actually a dual effort by Hubby and I. We had a friend join us for dinner and it was just really nice and simple.

Today's card is for a friend's Daughter who turns one next week.

I created the background first using a cloud stencil by DutchDoobaDoo and Broken China Distress Oxide ink.

The Unicorn and Balloons are from different Mama Elephant and Hampton Arts sets I got at Michael's on my recent jaunts around America (Tampa/Doylestown).

I used the sentiment from the Unicorn set..not sure I love 'eternal happiness' but it is what it is now.

I added a tiny number one, I like to make number card for the toddler years..

Pretty pleased with the end result, the balloons actually look like they are lifting the Unicorn.

Cx

Freshly Made Sketches: Give Thanks..

Hey,

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I had oodles of playtime at my desk last night, I thought I would play along with Freshly Made Sketches this week.

I decided I would dig out a very rarely used star wreath die by Fiskars, I love it, but before I got my metal shim it was painful to cut. I chose my fave and ancient sparkly silver paper for the wreath.

I used washi tape and a scrap of glittery paper for my strips and the smaller circle I die-cut from a scrap.

The 'thanks' die is by Lawn Fawn and it is one of my fave sentiment dies.

I love the happy sparkly end result. 

As it's Thanksgiving I can't leave without saying how thankful I am for my Husband, Family and Friends (new and old) that have been by my side this year through all kinds of ups and downs. They have remained my constant loving, caring, amazing support system. I'm also super thankful that I opened my mind and decided to exercise...it's a thing now and I love it.

Have a great Thanksgiving wherever you are.

Cx

Keeping it simple..

Hey,

Happy Thanksgiving Eve to you!!

I am actually quite excited about our mini Thanksgiving (Hubby, Me, a friend)..I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

I make calendars every year as a small gift, but they are actually a lot of work! 12 months of stamping and colouring...

So this year I decided to make them a bit easier.

I created smooshed backgrounds, stamped the year and an image over the background and added the ready made calendar piece. Boom!

Super simple and actually quite pretty.

I think my fave so far is the Dog and he has been earmarked for a specific person. I think I will have to make more of those ones!

If you are celebrating, have a great Thanksgiving and try not to spend too much on Black Friday (yeah right..)

Cx

Retro Rubber Challenge #76..Anything Goes..

Hey,

Yes! It is that time again for a shiny new Retro Rubber challenge.

This time we have everyone's fave for you...Anything Goes..

I decided to have a manual rummage through my stamps to find something that hadn't been used in ages for this challenge. Embarrassingly I came across this beautiful stamp by Gorjuss that I had a) forgotten I had and b) have never used!!

I bought it as part of a post-Christmas sale haul in January 2016.

I coloured the stamp using Zigs and a paintbrush, then I fussy cut it out and mounted it onto a wobbler. I thought it would be a fun random card for a friend who recently became a cat owner, hence the sentiment!

I kept the whole card pretty simple and chose a co-ordinating card blank and an ancient scrap of Chevron paper. I like the simplicity of it, as the stamp is HUGE and a bit fussy.

My friend already has the card and I have actually seen it in her kitchen on her 'Cards from Claire' pinboard..I am a Happy Mail Spammer!

Check out what my awesome teammates have made over at Retro Rubber and show us your fun anything goes makes.

Don't forget to use a stamp older than a year on your project and tell us all about it, that is a big part of the Retro Rubber fun. Also please feel free to combine our challenge with others, but keep it to a maximum of 10 challenges including ours.

Challenge ends on December 1st.

Cx

Christmas Wrapping: Tags...

Hey,

Happy Monday, hope you had a great weekend, Hubby and I had awesome fun with the Nixons.

I have a few Christmas gifts that need to leave now-ish, as they are going to faraway climes.

As we all know I LOVE tags - shop bought, handmade, I don't care, I just love tags.

So the starting point of any gift for me is the tag.

I had to make these very quickly, so I cheated and used ready cut manilla tags, smooshed them in some Distress Oxide ink and then stamped the cute sentiment by Unity Stamp Co and the Reindeer by Clearly Besotted.

I like to just colour bits of the image, it adds a bit of interest to the tags. I did this last year, but made the entire tag (smooshed background + tag die).

Fun and easy to make and will look pretty on the gifts.

I'll show you the wrapped gifts later in the week.

Cx

Sketch Saturday #490 Crafty Sentiments...

Hey,

Happy Saturday to you and welcome to the latest sketch for the Sketch Saturday challenge.

Our sponsor this week is Crafty Sentiments Design and they are offering a prize of 3 digis from their store.

Here's the sketch, which just happens to be by me!

I chose the Tess Summer Fun stamp, as I thought it would work really well in the oval shape, as I wanted to be true to my own sketch LOL.

The stamp was a dream to colour and I used Promarkers and Spectrum Noir Sparkle pens. The stitched oval die is by MFT and I need to use it more!! I kept the background simple, because the stamp is so detailed. The tiny pink heart is from my 'box of hearts' I have a box of punched, die-cut, gifted hearts, it comes in very handy.

Final touch was to add a sentiment and I decided to send the card to a friend, so chose a suitable sentiment for her.

I can't wait to see what you do with my sketch, but first check out what the rest of the DT have made over at Sketch Saturday.

Challenge ends 24th November 7pm GMT / 2pm EST

Cx

Holiday Card Making Extravaganza

Hey,

Happy Friday.

Hubby and I are off to DTown tonight to visit the Nixon's (aka JT's Parents) - Love, love spending the weekend with them.

Today I thought I would FINALLY share all the makes from last Saturday's Holiday Card Making Extravaganza hosted by The InkPadNYC and taught by Cheiron.

SO much fun was had, always awesome to be with the entire craftgang in one place.

We made 20 cards and a gift card holder!! It was A LOT.

My main card was one of my fave makes - the candy cane background is a stencil that we used with Distress Paint and the stamp is by Tim Holtz.

Here are the rest of the cards -

I love them all, I didn't really need anymore Christmas cards, but if I don't use everything it means I get to make less next year!

Cx

Christmas Card 2017: Paper Smooches Kissmoose...

Hey,

It's pretty cold here in NYC already and I am over it already!

Anyway.. here are some more of my Christmas Card makes..

I love this Paper Smooches set called Chubby Chum Pals. I had seen it on someone's blog last year and had to have it.

Last year I made identical Christmas cards with the Moose, the only difference being that the falling flakes background was yellow.

This year I heat embossed the falling flakes and falling circle backgrounds by Neat and Tangled, using WOW! holographic powder..such amazing shimmer.

I love this Moose and his punny sentiment, so easy to colour and create cards with, I totally overuse him.

Cx

Hello babies..

Hey,

I have this strange love for new Baby Cards...

They make me so happy and I was lucky enough recently to be able to make two of them - one for a boy and one for a girl - yay!

The main card today is for friends of mine that just had a baby girl. As the female half of this particular couple is quite funky, I decided that a card to welcome her Daughter should also be funky!

In the clear out of box of shame I came across a host of ready to go backgrounds, including the one I used for this card, which is actually an oops that I couldn't bear to part with...

So glad that I kept it as it has worked out perfectly for this card. I die-cut a babygrow (onesie) from some precious ancient paper, love the sparkly stripes. I love the giant baby word die, it's by Lil Inker and I had to hunt it down after seeing it somewhere years ago. I stamped the rest of the sentiment, which doesn't show so well here, but it did pop on the card IRL.

The next card is for a client of mine and my colleague and I adore her and wanted to send her a nice personal card from us and the team. She has 3 Daughters already, so that was the theme of my card.

What do you think?

I love it, the cute stamp and die set by Mama Elephant worked out so well here. The sentiment was a gift from JT.

More babies please!

Cx

Retro Rubber Challenge #75 Colour Challenge, still time to play...

Hey,

There is still time for you to play along with the current fun Retro Rubber challenge.

This time we have a photo to inspire you..

Pick out some, or all of the colours for your project.

Check out what my awesome teammates have made over at Retro Rubber and show us what the photo inspired you to make.

Don't forget to use a stamp older than a year on your project and tell us all about it, that is a big part of the Retro Rubber fun. Also please feel free to combine our challenge with others, but keep it to a maximum of 10 challenges including ours.

Challenge ends on November 17th

Cx

CASology: Tiny Reindeer Mugs...

Hey,

Happy Monday.

I had a fun Saturday at the all day class, so good to see all of the craftgang again, it had been a while.

Will show you all the makes later on this week.

Today I am entering the latest CASology challenge.

Great excuse to use some of those smaller stamps that come in sets. As I have been making Christmas cards, I recently saw the great Reindeer mug in the Neat and Tangled Beary Merry set, but didn't actually get a chance to use it.

So I pulled it out to create my entry. I decided to make a kind of border using the mug stamp, it works really well and you still get a lot of clean white space, making it very CAS. Super easy stamp to colour, I used Distress Inks and a paintbrush.

Another fun card to add to my Christmas card stash.

Cx

Thinking of You...

Hey,

Sadly Hubby's great Aunt passed away recently and his Mum was very close to her and so I wanted us to send her a card.

I don't really do sympathy cards, I find them hard to make.

So I opted for a Thinking of You card.

I used a new stamp by Pink Fresh Studio..it's gorgeous and my MIL has a beautiful garden and a love of flowers, so it seemed right for this card.

I watercoloured it using distress inks and added a heat embossed onto vellum tag.

Super simple, but I hope will brighten her day a bit.

Cx

Christmas Card 2017: Critters for my Niece

Hey,

Today is the Holiday Card Extravaganza with Cheiron and the Inkpad, super excited to be in class all day and with my craftgang. We haven't crafted together in a while, so it's going to be a hoot.

Following on from yesterday's special Christmas card post, I thought I would show you the beautiful card I made for my Niece.

My Niece is such a character, she attracts your attention and I have this vision of her ending up with a random posse of peeps eventually, so this stamp really made me think of her.

It's by Avery Elle and is called Sledding Critters, I bought it because I loved their Birthday Bus stamp so much and this is the same 'gang'.

Because the stamp is so detailed I wanted to keep the background simple.. Doesn't look it at first glance right?

It is just one easy cut, as it is a die by Simon Says Stamp 'Birch Tree Window' and I love it, I waited AGES for it to come back in stock.

I went with a more child friendly sentiment and I like it. As a final touch I added a couple of clear droplets by Pretty Pink Posh and voila! Christmas card.

I love it, it's going to be hard parting with it, but I know that Florence is going to love it, so that makes it easier LOL.

Cx

Christmas Card 2017: Your Next Stamp..Hic!

Hey,

Happy Friday.

I have been having a lot of fun at my desk making special cards for my peoples. I normally only make individual cards at Christmas for my parents, Hubby and JT. Mainly because I never leave myself enough time to do this..

This year I really wanted to make some special cards for my Nephew and Niece and for some of the people that I really really could not live without.

Today's card is actually for JT's parents, they are the BEST thing to happen to Hubby and I ever! They are fun, inclusive, sweet, funny, food loving, gambling, booze hounds that are not at all like parents to me, more like BFFs. I literally adore them. Sadly life gets in the way and we haven't seen each other much this year.

We are seeing them next weekend and I know it's early, but I wanted to hand deliver their card, so it doesn't get sucked into the USPS missing Christmas card vortex... its a thing. For realz.

I love this stamp set by Your Next Stamp and I actually made JT's card with it last year, talk about keeping it in the family!

As I mentioned yesterday box of shame has produced gold...the background for this card was all ready to go! Love that.

Have a great weekend, I am all wiggly with excitement, craftgang are doing Cheiron's 2nd Holiday Extravaganza class hosted by The Inkpad tomorrow - ALL DAY!! Yay.

Cx

London Mouse Farewell...

Hey,

Sadly one of my work colleagues in London is leaving this week.

She has been a really good friend to me and I am sad that she is leaving and that I can't be there to booze  see her off ;)

I have had the London Mouse set by MFT for about 3 months now and I haven't used it!! So I stamped and die-cut most of the images to create a fun scene.

The sentiments are by Simon Says Stamp and I thought they were more fun than a typical good luck.

Following my playdate with JT where I admitted that I have a box of shame on my desk (no idea what was in it at that point), I took the box and cleaned it out. It is now all nicely organised.

In that box I found a whole bunch of backgrounds I had stamped at one of Jamey's craftgang meet-ups..

I have made x4 cards so far using the 'found' backgrounds. Love it when my messiness pays off!

Cx

Beep Beep...

Hey,

So a friend of mine recently passed her driving test.

When she told me about this, she wrote 'Beep Beep' in her email, which for some reason tickled me, so that became the main point of my card for her!

I bought the great Tim Holtz alphas last week in Tampa on super bargain sale and the other 'Beep' is just stickers, but they didn't photograph so well.

The truck and the gifts are actually Christmas stamps that I cut and coloured and decided not to use once I hit my target, I thought this was a great way to repurpose them.

The star stamped tag was just kicking around on my desk, so I finally used it!

Fun card for a fun friend.

Beep Beep!

Cx

Retro Rubber Challenge #75 Photo Colour Challenge..

Hey,

Welcome to another fun Retro Rubber challenge.

This time we have a photo to inspire you..

Pick out some, or all of the colours for your project.

I pretty much went with all the colours and used the flower image as an inspiration when hunting for the right stamp set.

As I love Flower Jar stamps, I thought this one by Unity Stamp Co. would be perfect for this fall inspired challenge, I've had it since January 2016.

The flowers in the jar, feel very fall like to me and I kept it all very simple by watercolouring the image and adding a sentiment banner. The pearls were added to cover an oops.

I thought that the stripey card blank really offset the colours of the coloured image. I need to use these card blanks more!

Check out what my awesome teammates have made over at Retro Rubber and show us what the photo inspired you to make.

Don't forget to use a stamp older than a year on your project and tell us all about it, that is a big part of the Retro Rubber fun. Also please feel free to combine our challenge with others, but keep it to a maximum of 10 challenges including ours.

Challenge ends on November 7th

Cx

Playdate Oxide Masking..

Hey,

Happy Monday and Happy Birthday to Cheiron!

Yesterday I had a fun playdate with JT, I mainly gossiped and finished off bits and bobs, it has been forever since we did this.

JT had seen this fun distress ink masked striped background with a black image stamped over it. So we gave that a go, she has posted her makes today too.

The main card is my first attempt - LOVE Distress Oxides for this, they are so buttery and blend so well, Wilted Violet is my fave colour. I added a Zini and a sentiment by Simon Says Stamp (thanks Jen) to make a cheeky card for Cheiron.

Next card I got all brave!!

Yes I double masked and used RED ink over the green - big girl pants firmly pulled up.

As it felt so Christmassy it, it felt right to add the Avery Elle Santa and sentiment.

Love a playdate with my girl, especially whenI get to try out new fun things. We are now both officially Oxide fans, we really didn't see the point, but after I did a class with Cheiron and passed on the knowledge we love them. Classic case of read the manual right?

Cx

Sketch Saturday #488 Lemon Shortbread..

Hey,

Happy Saturday to you and welcome to the latest sketch for the Sketch Saturday challenge.

Our sponsor this week is Lemon Shortbread and they are offering a prize of 3 digi stamps from their store.

Here's the sketch, another one by me..

I chose the Winter Girl stamp, as I thought she would make a great Christmas card.

I printed out the stamp and coloured her using Promarkers and Spectrum Noir sparkle pens. I don't use the oval window dies very often, so it was good to use them here.

I slightly cheated and moved my sentiment to the other side of the image, as I thought it worked way better there!

I love the giant glittery star, I have had these for years and I only have a couple left sadly.

I can't wait to see what you do with my latest sketch, but first check out what the rest of the DT have made over at Sketch Saturday.

Challenge ends 10th November 7pm GMT / 2pm EST

Cx

More than Coffee..

Hey,

Happy Friday..coming to the end of my 2 day work week - gotta love a short week.

I think that my anniversary card for Hubby was possibly a bit of a stretch, even he didn't believe that I love him more than coffee LOL.

But I liked the idea...

The stamp set is by Gerda Steiner - Coffeesaurus - I love the cute Dino and he reminded me of Hubby (I'm sure that he will love that..)

Have a great weekend, I'll be hanging with my friends, Hubby and watching NFL, I mean did you see the Seahawks game last week?!

Cx

Sometimes I forget things..

Hey,

So I am back from Tampa, we had a lot of fun!

Sad to hear about the incident in NYC, my thoughts go out to all that where affected.

Before we left for Tampa, I realised that I had totally missed a friend's birthday. I so rarely do that, but it does mean I get to break out the great 'Naughty Nautical'set by Simon Says Stamp.

I kept this card very simple, as I made it at midnight and we had to be up at 3.30am!

I like the bright green card blank, it's from Target and sadly was the last one.

Cx